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OPINION
East Oregonian
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
MARISSA WILLIAMS
Regional Advertising Director
MARCY ROSENBERG
Circulation Manager
JANNA HEIMGARTNER
Business Office Manager
MIKE JENSEN
Production Manager
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OUR VIEW
DACA and
legislative failure
Earlier this week, Donald Trump
rescinded DACA, an Obama-era
policy that gave short-term relief
to about 800,000 residents who
illegally entered the United States as
children.
Nicknamed “Dreamers,”
those young people temporarily
protected by DACA are among the
most widely supported groups of
illegal immigrants in the country.
According to most recent surveys,
75-80 percent of Americans
approve of keeping them in the
U.S., either via some sort of avenue
to citizenship or under special
government protection from
deportation. After all, these are
children who arrived here without
really having a choice, have known
no other home and have committed
no crimes while in this country.
Still, there are immigration
hardliners who won’t budge, and
those 20-25 percent of Americans
and their representatives have
stopped any meaningful immigration
reform from being enacted, even on
a lay-up like the Dreamers.
For decades our national
legislative bodies have failed in
their duties. In order to protect
their own hides from that vocal
minority, members of those bodies
have disregarded the will of a
large majority of Americans. And
in covering their own behinds,
those Congressmen are hanging
Americans — and should-be
Americans — out to dry.
This country has long needed
comprehensive immigration reform,
but Congress hasn’t got it done.
This country has long needed
massive infrastructure investment,
but Congress hasn’t got it done.
This country has long needed
comprehensive tax reform, but don’t
hold your breath.
This puts presidents in a poor
position. Being a constitutional law
scholar, Barack Obama admitted that
his DACA program was on shaky
legal ground from the beginning.
He made no bones about that, but
felt he had no other choice because
Congress had abdicated its duties by
doing nothing and leaving a critical
problem festering and unresolved.
President Trump claimed this
week that DACA was sure to be
challenged in court — and it would
likely fall. Perhaps he is right. But
the announcement of his decision
was nearly universally panned by
Congressmen both Republican and
Democratic. Yet how hypocritical of
them. They are the people who can
solve this mess, yet they choose to
criticize rather than create.
A wide majority of Americans
want to protect Dreamers. Congress
should do their job and create a
reasonable, legal system for doing
so. Then get on to the next problem
on the list.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher
Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
Strength in unity
The Daily Astorian
F
or many Americans, the
unimaginable images of 16 years
ago today are burned into our
national fabric, never to be forgotten.
Those searing memories of mass
death and destruction resulted from
coordinated attacks by the Islamic
terrorist group al-Qaeda aboard four
hijacked airliners.
Two hijacked jets toppled the Twin
Towers of New York’s World Trade
Center while a third slammed into
the Pentagon in Arlington County,
Virginia. Aboard the fourth hijacked
plane, which initially changed course
toward Washington, D.C., passengers
bravely fought the terrorists and the
plane crashed into a vacant field near
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
In all, the attacks killed 2,997
people, injured more than 6,000 others,
and caused at least $10 billion in
infrastructure and property damage. The
deaths tragically included more than 325
responding law enforcement officers and
nearly 100 firefighters.
The 9/11 legacy, however, goes
far beyond the attacks. It rattled our
national consciousness, our sense of
security and it changed our lives in
ways we previously took for granted. A
generation of children born that year are
now teenagers entering their final years
of high school, about to enter adulthood
in a world far different than before their
birth. They have never experienced our
nation at peace.
What they have seen is that the
attacks spurred the War on Terrorism,
which continues to this day, the longest
war in our history. They have learned
the 9/11 events also spawned increases
in hate crimes, overarching government
surveillance and profiling. They have
observed that as the war progressed it
created bitter political partisanship and
has cost billions of tax dollars. They
have watched as it has divided those
who believe the money should have
been spent to cure deep domestic ills
with those who say the far-away fighting
is protecting our freedom, security and
values.
As citizens and taxpayers, we must
consider it all as we try to set a positive
example for the future. While we need
to oppose those who engage in hate
and violence and uphold the principles
our nation was founded upon, we
must always hold government directly
accountable when it oversteps or
misleads.
Importantly, we must also never
forget the pain and loss of life from
9/11, and we must never lose sight of
the incredible heroism and sacrifice
it provoked or the national unity that
surfaced in its wake. On that day and
those that immediately followed, we
weren’t Democrats and Republicans,
we weren’t divided by race and cultural
issues. We unified as one nation, people
helping people, sacrificing when
necessary, all Americans.
It’s not the first time we’ve had
that national unity, and it won’t be our
last. It’s in our blood and dates to our
nation’s birth. It heroically rises like
the American flag hoisted by three
firefighters at ground zero in the 9/11
aftermath, and it proudly flies like
the Star-Spangled Banner over Fort
McHenry in Baltimore 203 years ago
this week during the War of 1812.
Each time our freedom is threatened,
and whenever the country or a region
suffers a calamity, Americans always
respond. The outpouring of national
support for the victims of hurricanes
Katrina, Sandy and Harvey provides
recent examples. Our history is filled
with countless others.
What we must do is to continue to
learn from these lessons. They teach us
all that our strength as a country is in our
unity, not in our divisiveness.
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public
issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website.
The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns
about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of
private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include
the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not
be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to 211 S.E.
Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
OTHER VIEWS
How the far right came
to love hippie food
Some time ago, I found myself in
One of Beck’s sponsors promotes
a buffet line around piles of inedible
“better ideas for off-the-grid living.”
looking grains, greens and grassy-
Another offers “next level gardening
smelling gratins at an alternative food
with a geodesic greenhouse.” These
cooperative’s Sunday dinner. No part
items would have fit, years ago, into
of this meal, I was assured, had been
the Whole Earth Catalog, a must-read
touched by the corporate food chain,
for the no-deodorant set.
the Big Ag puppeteers with their
One side, now, is heavily armed,
taxpayer-subsidized toxins.
Timothy and the other seems friendlier,
The evening was all very yeasty and
the products named for Burt and
Egan
dreadlocky, as you would expect. The
Annie, Ben and Jerry. A consistent
Comment
food was — I’m sorry — wretched. I
thread through the years is distrust
didn’t see it then, but I understand now
of institutions, of the Man. Another
that many social movements start on the fringe shared belief is self-sufficiency.
frontier, where earnestness ultimately wins out
The 1969 Whole Earth Catalog heralded
over the skepticism of people like me.
the “power of the individual to conduct his
It’s no secret that Whole Foods, the $13.7
own education, find his own inspiration, shape
billion acquisition of Amazon, took the
his own environment and share his adventure
“business” model I found in a leaky old loft in with whoever is interested.”
Port Townsend, Washington,
This sentiment heavily
long ago, and gave it a
influenced Steve Jobs. The
profitable corporate sheen.
catalog, he said, “was one of
But what’s less well
the bibles of my generation.”
known and somewhat
In his famous 2005 Stanford
surprising is how that same
commencement address,
food ethic drifted over into
Jobs compared the Whole
the paranoid world of the far
Earth Catalog to an early
right, where no truth is self-
version of Google —
evident and the apocalypse is
“idealistic, and overflowing
always imminent. At the dark
with neat tools.”
confluence of hippie and
There was a brief, shining
Hitler, you can buy a year’s
point when we seemed to
supply of Earth-friendly
have reached a national
quinoa.
consensus in the politics
What’s sad, and indicative
of natural food: Michelle
of the wretched Trump era,
Obama’s vegetable garden. It
is how something that started
was simple, instructive and
in a wave of hope and optimism migrated to
Jeffersonian, backing the notion that there’s
closed-minded, mercenary quarters.
an easy alternative to all the awful additives at
You can trace a bit of this transition to
the American table.
John Mackey, the Texas co-founder of Whole
But even something as wholesome as a
Foods. A libertarian and admirer of Ayn Rand, healthy diet message got dragged through the
he once lived in a vegetarian collective. “I
right-wing swamp, prompting a defiant Sarah
thought I’d meet a lot of interesting women,”
Palin to offer sugar cookies to students living
he told The New Yorker. “And I did.”
through an obesity epidemic.
By the time Whole Foods had purchased
One of the first acts of President Donald
Wild Oats, the communal ethic had been
Trump’s administration was to reverse an
overtaken by imperial ambition. But that was
Obama era proposed ban of chlorpyrifos, a
nothing compared with some of the current
pesticide shown to cause brain damage in
peddlers of alt-foods.
children. Trump has also rolled back new
So, in between rants about how Ku Klux
food rules designed to reduce sodium levels in
Klan members are “just Jewish actors,”
schools and give consumers more nutritional
Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones sells
information.
an exhaustive line of strange food. His market
Trump’s supporters live, disproportionately,
is “preppers,” people who’ve been preparing
in the Diabetes Belt, as the Centers for
for the End, for some time.
Disease Control labels parts of the country
Jones’ website urges fellow knuckle-
with highest percentage of people made ill by
draggers to “secure your food independence”
an excess of the awful American diet.
with his organic-sounding Patriot Pantry.
And while Trump’s most fervent supporters
From “fluoride-free mouthwash” — the better in the hard right are preparing for End Times
to secure precious bodily fluids, one assumes
with chemical-free freeze-dried and other
— to “strawberry fields cream of wheat,”
pseudo organics, their man gorges himself on
he assures his followers that his “non-GMO
Big Macs and slabs of well-done steaks and
meals have a 25-year shelf life.” Plus, no
tries to keep the rest of us in the dark. The
added MSG!
food message from this White House: Eat
Over at The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s soft-
your poisons, and don’t ask where they came
rock version of the hard right, a targeted
from.
demographic is the grumpy Trump supporter
■
who wants to Grow Your Own. The site’s
Timothy Egan worked for 18 years as a
story diet is heavy on the threat of transgender writer for The New York Times, first as the
kindergartners. But with food, Beck is closer
Pacific Northwest correspondent, then as a
to that co-op I visited.
national enterprise reporter.
What’s sad is
how something
that started in
a wave of hope
and optimism
migrated to
mercenary
quarters.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
U.S. PRESIDENT
Donald Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
U.S. SENATORS
Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5244
La Grande office: 541-962-7691
Jeff Merkley
313 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-3753
Pendleton office: 541-278-1129
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE
Greg Walden
185 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6730
La Grande office: 541-624-2400
GOVERNOR
Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
900 Court Street
Salem, OR 97301-4047
503-378-4582
REPRESENTATIVES
Greg Barreto, District 58
900 Court St. NE, H-38
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1458
Rep.GregBarreto@state.or.us
Greg Smith, District 57
900 Court St. NE, H-482
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1457
Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us
SENATOR
Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. NE, S-423
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us